Nurse of the Week

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (CN) – A nurse was sentenced to 4 days in jail for punching a 91-year-old patient in the mouth. Joan Rogers, 59, punched out an elderly woman who was in a Kaiser hospital for a hip fracture, the San Francisco Examiner reported.

Rogers pleaded no-contest this week to misdemeanor elder abuse. The 91-year-old patient apparently didn’t want to take her medicine. Prosecutor Steve Wagstaffe told the Examiner that another Kaiser employee saw Rogers punch the patient “with a fist in a hammerlike motion.” Wagstaffe told the newspaper the woman “suffered a lip laceration which bled profusely.” Rogers allegedly told a supervisor that she was “only defending herself,” the Examiner reported. Kaiser reported Rogers to police and to the Board of Registered Nurses.